Laser surgery

Surgery that uses a beam of laser light, rather than other instruments, to cut, dissect, remove, and so forth. The beam of light has advantages over other cutting instruments, such as scalpel or scissors. First, at the same time that it cuts, it tends to seal off tiny blood vessels and reduce bleeding. Second, it may be especially useful in endoscopic surgery, where there is not a lot of room for instruments. Third, it is very precise. Both the microspot carbon dioxide laser and the RevoLix laser used at BVI have minimum spot sizes of about 1/5 of a millimeter.